Medical Witnesses Scheduled

Prosecution Proceeds In Rape Trial

January 10, 2001|By COLIN POITRAS; Courant Staff Writer

MIDDLETOWN — Hospital workers who treated an alleged rape victim and forensic experts who analyzed evidence taken during the woman's exam are expected to testify today in the on-going rape trial involving former Greater Hartford Jaycees President Robert Walker.

Walker, 32, of Bloomfield, is accused of raping and kidnapping his former girlfriend in their Middletown apartment six times between Nov. 22, 1999, and March 3, 2000.

Walker remains free after posting $200,000 bail last August.

Tuesday was the fourth day of Walker's jury trial, which started on Jan. 3 in Middletown Superior Court. Judge Patrick J. Clifford is presiding over the 10-member jury. Prosecutors are expected to finish presenting evidence sometime next week.

On Tuesday, Assistant State's Attorney Russell C. Zentner called several people to the witness stand in an attempt to corroborate the woman's contention that she endured a lengthy, abusive relationship with Walker.

Dorothy M. Gross, who lives in the apartment directly below the one once shared by Walker and his girlfriend, testified Tuesday that she often couldn't sleep because of the noise the couple made, and she remembered hearing a women crying.

Middletown Police Det. Vincent Mazzotta testified that when he interviewed Walker's girlfriend after she was discharged from the hospital on March 3, the woman was ``very frail, very tired and exhausted.''

Mazzotta said the woman was so exhausted it made taking a statement from her difficult. Police interviewed Walker's girlfriend for more than seven hours.

``She didn't sit up straight at all,'' Mazzotta said. ``When we put her in the interview room, she laid on the couch and put her head on the arm rest. It was difficult to take a statement because she was so exhausted, at times she would close her eyes ....''

Walker's former girlfriend, who is also a Jaycees member, was taken to a local shelter for battered women because she was afraid that Walker or one of his acquaintances might find her and hurt her, Mazzotta said.

In prior testimony, Walker's girlfriend described him as a gun-toting stalker, and said she feared for her safety if she didn't submit to his sexual aggression. The woman said she also feared unidentified third parties that Walker said were constantly shadowing her.

Walker is charged with six counts of first-degree sexual assault, first-degree kidnapping, threatening and criminal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Walker has a prior sexual assault conviction dating to 1991.

Several of the current rape and kidnapping charges are listed as aggravated crimes because Walker is alleged to have displayed a gun or threatened the use of a weapon.